caravan, seven in number, were a wild-looking set,
each with a wooden club in his hand and a long-
barrelled Arab gun slung over his shoulder or a huge
horse pistol peeping in its red leather holster from
underneath the folds of his burnous. We travelled
with them all day and camped with them at night.
As they had no tents they arranged the cement
barrels to form a semi-circular wall, and lay down
under its lee with their camels beside them.
My tent came very near to being a great success
that night. Propped up with jereeds (palm sticks),
pinned together with wooden skewers cut off the
surrounding scrub, with El Ayed’s burnous hanging
like a curtain over the front, and the gaps filled up
with bundles of halfa grass, bushes, baggage, and
some casks of cement lent me by the caravan men, it
was very nearly wind-proof.
The members of the caravan took the greatest
interest in its erection, suggesting improvements,
collecting bushes, and doing their best to make it a
success. As a reward I stood them coffee and
cigarettes all round, with the result, which I had
not quite bargained for, that they all brought their
supper and ate it round my fire.
A little sand-coloured mouse, known as a bou
byether, crept into the tent as I was sitting on my
bed after supper and, in less time than it takes to
write, gnawed a hole in the leather couscous bag by
my feet. I frightened him off, but in a very few
minutes he was back again gnawing away at a bag
full of dates. I drove him off again, but soon he
returned and commenced operations upon one of my